We finally managed to get to the beach on day three of our getaway, and it was worth the wait. My shutter snapped an overwhelming amount of times, and I’ll just say it: there are a lot of photos in this post.
Click here if you missed Part 2!
The first thing I saw when we walked onto the sand turned out to be a lifer–a juvenile Black-bellied Plover. He was running along the shoreline on the opposite side of a breachway, and as I was busy snapping some photos, a Double-crested Cormorant flew straight at me and landed in the water between us.
I wasn’t planning on going anywhere any time soon, but the plover was moving away and my sister was calling me in the opposite direction because there was a flock of sandpipers scurrying around.
The majority of them were Sanderlings, running to and fro with the waves, searching for marine worms. And while I zig-zagged down the beach tracking them, I met two other birders with cameras even bigger than mine, if you can believe it. They were super friendly as we analyzed the ID of some shorebirds in the flock. You can check out their photography here!
One of my favorite things about Sanderlings is their general nonchalance; they’re really not bothered whether you’re there or not. You can track them down the coastline for the better part of the day and they don’t really seem to mind.
They also don’t seem to mind who joins their flock. I noticed an odd man out in the group: a Dunlin in his nonbreeding plumage. I couldn’t tell, but it looked like maybe the Sanderlings had elected him as leader of the pack (see above image).
And nearby I noticed two smaller shorebirds, separate but still sticking close by. One of the them was a Semipalmated Plover, which brought some of my own words back to me from before the trip: “I want to get really great pictures of a Semipalmated Plover.”
So I think a little celebration is called for at this point, because l O o K
And right on the heels of the Semipalmated Plover, tagging along like some kind of younger sibling, was a Semipalmated Sandpiper (maybe he got confused by the names). And I know he’s not the smallest sandpiper in the world (that distinction would go to the Least Sandpiper), but crouched on the sand beside him, I couldn’t really tell the difference.
The thing is, these tiny shorebirds are so fast that when I stopped every once in a while to admire a seagull, I would have to readjust to slower-moving birds. It was kind of like when astronauts come back to Earth and forget about gravity.
And these seagulls came in all ages and species. All three birds in the above collage are American Herring Gulls at different stages of life!
And here are three different ages of Ring-billed Gull. I’m no expert at aging seagulls, so I won’t try to pinpoint years here, but it’s fun to see how different the same bird can present.
And as we wrap things up here, I thought I got another lifer, but I realized it was actually another Black-bellied Plover, just an adult version this time!
Anyways, congrats! You’ve reached the end of the post. It was hard deciding what photos made the cut, but I figured keeping it under 50 was a good idea.
Stay tuned for Part 4!
